Hyderabad: The Telangana government on Friday unveiled its prestigious flagship program titled Telangana Emergency Response Initiative (TERI), aimed at saving lives of trauma victims at National Highways by providing timely life-saving emergency medical care.
The TERI features 55 trauma care centres which will be linked to all the major national highways in Telangana, so that seven multispecialty emergency healthcare services including trauma, heart attacks, brain strokes, emergencies related to mother and child, medical emergencies like acute asthma, renal failure, acute gastroenteritis, septicemia etc, surgical emergencies including acute abdomen, renal colic, appendicitis burns etc. will be available to victims.
The design and protocols of TERI have been developed based on a similar successful trauma care model in Tamil Nadu, which was extensively studied by the Telangana State Health department.
The trauma care centres that will provide emergency care include NIMS, 17 teaching hospitals under Director of Medical Education (DME), 21 district hospitals and 16 Area Hospitals under Telangana Vaidya Vidhan Parishad (TVVP).
“The TERI program is a major step being pushed by Chief Minister, K Chandrashekhar Rao with the sole aim of providing emergency care at the right time to trauma victims. Meticulous planning has gone into TERI so that patients get timely emergency care from ambulance till they reach the trauma care facility,” Health Minister, T Harish Rao on Friday said.
Pre-hospital and intra-hospital facilities:
For the first time in government hospitals, Telangana will launch the concept of exhaustive pre-hospital medical services and intra-hospital facilities for trauma patients.
Under pre-hospital services, trauma patients will be brought to the nearest trauma care centre by a 108 ambulance, which will be equipped with CPR equipment including AED (Automated External Defibrillators) etc.
As soon as the trauma patient is taken into an ambulance, the trained emergency medical technician will start recording vital healthcare parameters that will be available online immediately to the emergency doctors at the nearest trauma centre. The doctors at the emergency will guide the medical technicians to stabilize the patient and also start preparing to receive the patient at the trauma care centres.
Intra-hospital facilities:
The emergency/casualty medical departments of all the identified 55 trauma centres will be revamped in the coming days. Exclusive colour coded triage areas in red, yellow, green and black will be established. The emergency wings will be equipped with life saving medical infrastructure including defibrillators, ultrasounds, CT scans etc.